A former Wall Street crook with ties to the Mafia allegedly set up two dozen fake cancer charities across the country and scammed donors out of more than $150,000, prosecutors charge.

Starting in 2014, Ian Hosang, 63, of Staten Island, began establishing fake non-profits with legitimate-sounding names, including “American Cancer Society for Children” and “United Way of New York Inc.,” but donations never went to medical research or community outreach, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

Instead, he “lined his own pockets,” DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.

Hosang was arrested May 9 and arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court on 12 counts of grand larceny, three counts of identity theft and one count of scheme to defraud. He was released without bail.

He received slaps on the wrist in previous run-ins with the law over charity schemes — In 2018, North Dakota and Washington dissolved Hosang’s phony charities, and barred him from establishing any more, SILive reported. Three years later, the Michigan Attorney General Office dissolved 10 of his entities, the Mining Journal reported. 

He now faces seven years in prison if convicted.

Prior to his charity scams, Hosang was a wannabe Jordan Belfort.

In a 1997 complaint federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Hosang of being the ringleader of a pump-and-dump stock scheme, and claimed one of his partners, Frank Mancini, was connected to the Gambino crime family, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Hosang’s “stockbrokers” were just potheads he found on the subway, and he and Mancini once beat a rival broker and hung him upside down out of a ninth floor window, The Journal reported.

Hosang pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and money laundering charges in 1999. He served 12 years in federal prison, SILive reported.

Hosang’s lawyer, Paul Martin, refused to comment.

This article was originally posted here